Five Short Answer Questions (< 300 Word Answer per Question):
1. What is Ethics?
2. What is morality?
3. What are the ethical theories identified in HLP Chap. 10?
4. What are the 4 major “ethical principles” in health care that support informed decision-making by patients?
5. What is the difference between general consent and informed consent in health care?

Current Event Commentary (< 300 Words):

Take a look at this report from a case in 2013 on the Lawsuit: Doctor Tied Patient's Tubes during Labor without Her Consent filed by Jessica Willey of KTRK in Houston, Texas. After reading Willey's report check the "Female Inmates Sterilized in California Prisons Without Approval". This California case deals with prisoners who may have undergone sterilizations without proper informed consent. Prisoners qualify as a vulnerable population, where physicians and state must afford them greater protections in health decision-making due to their diminished rights and susceptibility to coercion. So, performing sterilizations without informed consent or applying coercion to achieve a "therapeutic goal" is very troubling and problematic for lots of reasons.

In both cases, communication was a problem, and when it is faulty during informed consent, ethical and legal problems often follow.
If you believe informed consent litigation is a rarity, then take a look at this case discussed by Joanne Finnegan titled Whistleblower Doctor Files Lawsuit Over Concurrent Surgeries at Massachusetts General posted on 8 Jun. 2017.

Apparently, patients undergoing surgery within this system may not know their surgeons may be engaged in other surgeries concurrently. Time is a factor in surgery, and delays put individuals at increased risk. And some hospitals are changing their informed consent forms to address their lack of notice on this practice.

While there are likely other issues the CMS and the DOJ may want to discuss with these entities beyond informed consent, take a look at New 2017 posting "Informed Patient? Don’t Bet On It", By Mikkael A. Sekeres, M.d. and Timothy D. Gilligan, M.d.

Who should be responsible for asking the right questions? Informed consent is a nondelegable duty entrusted to physicians for informed consent with respect to the care and procedures they perform. Nurses are responsible for ensuring consent for document management (e.g. forms signed, witnessing consent, IC form charted, etc.), comforting patients, alerting physicians to problems, and explaining nursing care. Nursing personnel may obtain consent for nursing-directed care. If it involves a physician, then a nurse may not serve as a proxy.

In some states, the patient-based standard and combined standards require physicians disclose what a reasonable patient wants to know. Perhaps, patients should ask more questions, if physicians do not know. So, informed consent in health care isn’t as informed as we might believe.

Having given a few of them in my day, my experience was then informed consent was not always as good as it should be. On more than one occasion, I was told I took too much time giving informed consent. It was almost a don’t ask and don’t tell approach, especially in medical research. By the way, some, including me, advocate a higher level of informed consent for investigative research studies.

Who bears responsibility for avoiding the above episodes? How can these episodes be avoided in the future? By the way, there is a long history of prisoners suffering abuses related to their health care and participation in research without full disclosure or consent.

Also, the Bernell text identifies three methods that insurance companies might use to reduce adverse selection. Do some research and find at least one other method that insurance companies might use. Of the three methods identified by Bernell and the additional one that you've identified, which one do you think consumers would like least? Which one is the most appealing to consumers?

Five Short Answer Questions (&lt; 300 Word Answer per Question): 1...

Five Short Answer Questions (< 300 Word Answer per Question): 1...